Free The Marriage Test by Betina Krahn Page A

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    He wheeled to look at Axel and Greeve, who were suddenly busy rolling out their pallets for sleeping. Then he looked to his guardsmen. Heureaux intercepted his scrutiny and, with a smile, directed his glance across the campfire to the cart. It took a moment for the sense of it to register.
    She was responsible. She might not have cooked exactly, but she’d done something to make their usual disaster edible. And he’d missed it.
    He reddened and stalked for his cot with his stomach rumbling for more.
    Dammit.

Chapter Eight
    Griffin awakened hungry and irritable the next morning and as they resumed their journey, his mood darkened still further. Axel and Greeve kept wending their way back to the cart, and each time his own gaze went with them and lingered alarmingly on the halo of reddish hair that belonged to his cook. Each time he roared for them and sent them riding ahead on some errand or other. But his attempt to discipline his own gaze and thoughts was not so successful.
    He kept recalling the defiant flash of his new cook’s unusual eyes as he held her against the convent wall.
    That was what bothered him most, he realized. Julia of Childress might know something about kitchens, might even be a cook of sorts. But to him, she would always be a female first … a tart-tongued, pepper-haired wench who was brazen and arrogant and entirely too full of herself. And the last thing he needed was a temperamental female meddling in what was left of his beleaguered kitchens and bringing them to a grinding halt … especially as he was preparing to take a bride he wanted about as much as he wanted to have both of his legs broken on a rack.
    Midday, they located a copse of trees near a stream and stopped to be out of the hot sun for a while. The men watered the horses and tied them out in a grassy area, then removed their helms and sun-heated mail shirts to sprawl beneath the trees.
    Griffin was in the process of joining his men when he saw his new cook and her chaperone slipping away along the leafy bank and followed, intending to order them back to the cart. But they continued, out of sight of the others, to a bend in the stream where the flow had gouged out a shallow pond. He stopped and watched for a moment, curious about what they would do.
    Through the trees, he saw Julia of Childress raise and tuck her skirts into her belt and wade bare-legged into the cool water. She kicked up a spray and called to Sister Regine to join her. The good sister declined.
    Rightly so, he grumbled mentally. What the devil was she doing out there in the water, exposing her legs. Smooth and muscular and neatly tapered. He watched her untie the top of her gown and open her chemise to splash water on her throat and chest. Smooth throat and creamy … a pang of frustration shot through him as she turned slightly and blocked his view of her bared breasts.
    Look at her. No cook worth her salt splashed around bare-legged and bare-breasted in a stream. She was supposed to oversee the feeding and nourishment of his whole household, for God’s sake, and here she was prancing around in a stream like some pagan water sprite. How could he possibly trust his health and well-being to a female who behaved like a deranged bacchanal—
    A branch snapped somewhere and she snatched her chemise together and whirled to search the bank. His heart skipped at the sight of big green eyes set in a heart-shaped face and framed by a swirl of bright hair. All he could think was that in sunlight that hair seemed more like spun gold than dusky red pepper.
    “What are you doing there, Your Lordship?” she called breathlessly.
    He realized that the wood that had snapped was beneath his foot. He had inched forward into the sunlight without realizing it and now stood fully exposed on the bank above her. Appalled at being caught staring, he scrambled for an excuse.
    “You’re too far from the others,” he managed to grind out. “The closer we get to Paris, the more